


A Clone Alone

by Basmathgirl



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Alien Abduction, Alien Technology, Clones, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Post-Episode: s04e13 Journey's End
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 10:26:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29608017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Basmathgirl/pseuds/Basmathgirl
Summary: On the first day they met, the Doctor had suspected Donna wasn’t human. It turned out that she was something else entirely.
Relationships: The Doctor & Donna Noble
Comments: 8
Kudos: 16





	A Clone Alone

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** the only thing I have ever owned here is a few grains of sand in my shoe after going to the beach.  
>  **A/N:** this was prompted by a line in Kerblam! (seen 18/11/18) and contains a passing reference to the book “Beautiful Chaos”.

Donna waited until the Doctor was occupied by saying farewell to Jack, Martha and Mickey before she drew the new Metacrisis Doctor aside to speak to him in private. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?”

“Of course, I am,” he assured her. “Once there, I can disable the dimension cannon and keep Rose out of mischief.”

“That’s not the only type of mischief she has on her mind, judging by the possessive glare she’s just thrown me,” she noted, and then grew more serious. “I want you to know that I _will_ find you when all of this is over.”

He forlornly commented, “You said that to Lee.”

In answer, she quickly grasped his hand between hers. “And I meant it,” she pointed out. “Didn’t I search every single database for him? Well. There you are then. I won’t rest until we are back together. You just watch me.”

“I’ll be waiting,” he murmured, and hugged her tight. 

Half an hour later he was not so confidant. As they turned away from the sea and made their way up the beach towards the sand dunes, the new Metacrisis Doctor contemplated his lost life in the TARDIS and the threatened existence of his relationship with Rose. Her running after the dematerialising TARDIS like that had spoken volumes to him, and he could feel the cold loneliness seep into his veins. One more look towards the sea, and then he gritted his teeth to face his future. One step at a time. 

There was a faint shout. He could have sworn he’d heard a particular voice, but it must have been a deep yearning within him, forcing the thought into his head. There was no one who would be shouting for his attention. He must have been having a delusional moment. 

Resigned to his fate, he trudged through the sand in the wake of Jackie and Rose; and plastered on his best coping persona.

One late winter night, the Doctor sat high on the hill, contemplating the stars in the evening sky with Wilf. 

“Who would have thought we’d come to this, eh,” Wilf commented. “You, me and the stars. All safe in the heavens again, thanks to you.”

From his semi-reclined position on a battered old deckchair, the Doctor gazed up at his old friend as he modestly replied, “It wasn’t just me, Wilf. Donna played her part too, remember.” 

Sighing, Wilf agreed, “Yeah, shame it don’t mean nothing to her. She ain’t herself, and it saddens me when she tries to be; what with her headaches and everything.”

This was the opening the Doctor had been hoping for. “While I think to ask, apart from when Donna travelled with me, did she ever spend a long amount of time away from home?”

“Ooh let me think,” Wilf pondered, rubbing a hand over his chin. “She went away with the school to France a couple of times. There was the flat she had before all that Lance nonsense, and then, of course, after Jeff died, she went all over the place looking for you, for the best part of a year. Why? Is there a problem?”

“No,” the Doctor replied, feeling the futility of getting an answer to his own pending question. “I was just wondering, that’s all, if she had seemed really different after any of her trips.”

“Is this to do with her headaches?”

“Could be.”

“Hmm. I can’t think of any major changes in her until you brought her home that night. Sorry.”

“That’s okay, Wilf,” the Doctor consoled him. “I’m always on the lookout for a cure, and you never know what I might have missed.”

Wilf’s expression softened from worried to sad. “I have faith in you, Doctor. If anyone can bring back our old Donna, you can.”

It was a conversation that would come back to him some years later, during one of the intervals in his travels with the Ponds. Alone, he had entered the foreign facility housed on a distant planet. A planet that seemed abandoned by all but a few scientific beings. Twice now he had encountered races that were able to clone human lookalikes, with varying degrees of success. But it had sparked an interest to find which alien society had the technology he hadn’t, until that point, looked for in a long time. 

There had been lots of low whisperings, in far flung corners of the universe, about this particular race and how elusive they were, but he had finally found them. The Masters of Changelings they were called in their own language. In previous centuries they had sold their fledgling technology to the likes of the Sontarans, and at some point, had been stolen by agents of the Silence. 

Anyway. A flash of the psychic paper and he was in. A certified curious scientific visitor. 

The being who greeted him was called Beolek. A tall, gangly biped who spoke in soft tones and gave very little away in facial expressions as they loped along. More like an animated puppet, the Doctor thought as he was shown around. 

“Where did you get your original specimens?” he asked Beolek. “This facility must have had its early experiments before you were successful.”

Beolek bowed in acknowledgement. “We were very successful but now this is only an archive. Why are you here, Doctor?”

“Oh, you know. Just satisfying my curiosity,” he deliberately babbled. “There are lots of legends about you, but I wanted to see for myself. And I must say that I am impressed. Lovely architecture, and the ambience is restful, among other things.”

There was a slight hesitation before Beolek responded by saying, “Everything is maintained as it should be.”

“Talking of legends, you didn’t seem at all surprised to see me turn up here,” the Doctor noted. “Why is that?”

“It was foretold that the DoctorDonna would be united,” Beolek stated. “This is the time for it to happen.” 

The Doctor gawped at them. “The DoctorDonna,” he gasped. “Here?”

Another bow. 

“Why?” the Doctor demanded, growing enraged. “Why did you bring her here?”

It did not gain an angry reaction. Instead, Beolek was rather placid as they explained, “We found her long ago, on her own, in danger, otherwise we would not have taken her. It was for the good of all. The prophecy declared she save the universe. This way she has remained alive.”

“I’m taking her with me,” the Doctor announced. “Where is she?”

“I cannot allow that without express permission first,” Beolek had begun to say, but the Doctor was racing away.

Where could she be, he asked himself. 

Running down a long narrow corridor, he held his sonic screwdriver aloft, looking for any life sign that was human in any way whatsoever. The TARDIS must have had a good reason to bring him to this planet.

After an hour had passed, his sonic caught a faint blip to his left, and he eagerly followed the signal. It took him to a darker area of the facility. Obviously glamour was only for visitors to see in the newer main entrance. The sonic led him to a side corridor that became almost a tunnel, passed several doorways. It would seem that the technicians who worked in this area were much shorter than Beolek, judging by the height of each access point. 

Suddenly the sonic flashed towards one particular entrance, surrounded by glowing panels. Nothing suggesting any danger; merely communication points to monitor whatever was within. The room contained one occupant, who apparently was slumbering peacefully. 

Creeping in through the low doorway, the Doctor spotted the ‘bed’ surrounded by a humming sound as equipment kept the figure within it alive. It was more of a suspension pod. 

“Donna? Donna!” he cried as he realised who the figure was. 

However, this was not the Donna he had known for years. This was a much younger Donna. A Donna who had not physically progressed much further than the child abducted at the age of six years old.

It confirmed that the Donna he had known was really a cyborg. There had been organic material in her but basically, she was a sentient robot. The Doctor suspected this long ago when she had been a bride stolen by his TARDIS. 

When the Doctor had tried to wipe her memory, he realised the extent of her persona, and after talking to Wilf and Sylvia who, it turned out thought she was normal, knew he had to discover where Donna really was. The real Donna Noble.

And here she finally lay, waiting to be rescued in her own version of Sleeping Beauty. 

It had puzzled him for years, working out when she had been replaced by an alien force, but he had never suspected this. They must have abducted her quite early and it had been her ill-fated holiday trip to Strathclyde that had been used to switch bodies rather than the time during the year she had sought him out. 

He frantically leaned over her, scanning her body with his sonic screwdriver to see if anything were amiss. Fortunately, it confirmed what the pod instruments were telling him. All was fine. Everything in her body had been kept in working order, and there wasn’t even any notable muscle wastage.

Suddenly her eyes opened and gazed up at him. “Who are you?” she rasped.

“I’m a friend,” he cautiously replied. “Do you know why you are here?”

Her mind was slowly clearing, letting the information through as she took in the room. “I think so.” Startled eyes frowned for some more seconds at him then, to his enormous relief, she smiled. “Doctor. You’re the Doctor,” she sighed in recognition. “You came for me.”

“I had to,” he confessed. “Oh Donna. What have they done to you? I’m so sorry.”

“Not your fault,” she dismissed. “It all feels like a dream. A really long dream, but you were there, with a different face.”

He nodded, just about holding in his joy. “I was. With your android self.”

“Another me out there, all this time, but an android,” she remarked. “Am I like Martha was?”

“In a way,” he agreed, unsure how much she understood yet. “They created a sophisticated biomechanical clone version of you that was psychically linked. Allowing you to experience all the same things. It was the best one I’ve ever seen.”

“Did I smell like her clone too?”

“No,” he near laughed. “The Sontarans obviously bought their cloning technology many centuries before you were taken. Something was off about your scent, but that was it. Fascinating stuff.” He glanced towards the doorway for possible eavesdroppers before confiding, “I might confiscate this bed unit to see how exactly they’ve done it.”

It raised the question of whether she was merely an experiment to him now or yet another damsel in distress. She silently considered him for some seconds before bravely whispering, “Are you still my best friend?”

He gave a manly sniff. “Always,” he brokenly declared, and bent forward to cuddle her tiny body close. 

After that, he helped extract her from the bed and all its sensors, to stand on slightly wobbly feet. Touching the skin on her hand confirmed all his suspicions that she had gained something from the metacrisis too, but nothing dangerous because the machinery had efficiently maintained her survival levels. 

“Have I got to stay here?” she asked, suddenly fearful she would be left behind by this new version of the Doctor. 

“No. Beolek said they were waiting for this to happen. It is destiny that we be reunited,” he told her.

Inevitably, she asked, “Who is Beolek?”

So he used the long journey home to explain exactly how he had got there. 

Back in the TARDIS, Donna watched the Doctor dance about the console, twiddling, spinning and turning levers in a flamboyant manner to entertain any observer. It all seemed familiar although she had never personally experienced it. She had seen it all though, thanks to her replacement. 

“Right, back to Earth, early twenty-first century. Back to your own time zone,” the Doctor called out as he set the navigation coordinates for the TARDIS.

“But it isn’t my time zone anymore,” Donna forlornly stated. “I have to grow up again, don’t I?”

The Doctor stopped in his tracks. “Well, yes. A chance to do it all better this time around, I suppose.”

“Who would I live with? Where will I go?”

“You can’t stay here. It’s not safe for a child,” he quickly stated to stop her considering such a notion. 

“I know,” she mumbled, lowering her head. “My place at home isn’t there anymore. _She’s_ got it. The android one. I’m just an extra bit. Nobody wants me.”

He rushed over to kneel in front of her to offer comfort. “I could find you new parents. Ones who would be grateful to have a little girl. Would you like that?”

A silent tear dripped down her cheek. “Alright. It doesn’t matter where I go.” She lifted her head to ask him, “Was it worth rescuing me? Perhaps I should have stayed in the machine.”

“That wasn’t a life, Donna. That was an existence. You deserve to live the life that was stolen from you.”

She visibly swallowed before asking in a small voice, “Did you like android me?”

“Of course,” he proclaimed. “I was heartbroken when I lost you.”

“But you don’t want to keep the real me,” she surmised. 

“That isn’t true!” he protested. “I need to know you are safe. The older, android you could cope with situations that you as a child would have enormous difficulties with.”

Lifting her eyes, her hopeful gaze bore into him. “Even though I’ve still got some of your mind?”

“Donna, especially because you have some of my mind. A partially, syphoned Time Lord one. In some respects, you are nearer to being my own daughter,” he argued, “and every villain would use that against us. Or I’d make some horrible mistake. Look what happened with Susan.”

“Oh.” She gave a sniff. “What if I stayed in here until I grow up a few years?”

“I will not be your prison warden,” he maintained. “You need love and family.”

“And you can’t be my family,” she finished for him. “I’m just another anomaly.” 

“Don’t say that,” he begged. 

In a typical Donna move, she asked a different question. “Who do you travel with now?”

“A young couple called Amy and Rory Pond,” he stated. “You’d like them. And sometimes Dr River Song.”

Her eyes grew wide. “River Song,” she echoed. “I remember her. No wonder you don’t want me around. She’d never met me before. I’d cause a paradox by staying.”

“Time can be rewritten,” he said to console her. 

“Yeah, but you can’t be my dad, so we have to find me a new one,” she announced, standing up with determination. “I’m hungry and haven’t eaten real food in decades. Will I be able to?”

Taking her hand, he suggested, “Let’s find out.”

And then he led her away to the kitchen for some Jammie Dodgers or other sustenance.

“What’s that weird smile on the monitor?” Donna later asked him as they munched through a batch of sandwiches. 

They’d decided to have a picnic on the console room floor, with the TARDIS doors open to display the stars outside for their entertainment. The best of both worlds, he’d told her when he’d opened the doors. 

“Smile?” He turned to view the monitor, and grinned when he saw what she meant. “That, my dear Donna, is a crack in time, that appeared on Amy’s bedroom wall when she was a small child. Other such cracks have appeared through time during our adventures.”

“So you’ve been given some cracks in time. Can anything travel through them?” she wondered.

“A creature called Prisoner Zero managed it.”

“Hmm.” After a few moments of consideration, she asked, “Was it very big?” 

“It could take human form, but it was big like an anaconda with huge teeth,” he replied. “Why?”

She turned her excited gaze onto him. “Could someone like me travel through it?”

“I suppose so,” he slowly answered, “although you’d risk being forgotten here. Perhaps even wiped from history. What are you planning?”

“Let me take a peek at Mum and Gramps for one last time and I’ll tell you,” she promised, giving him a mischievous wink. 

On a foreign cold beach, on the alternative coast of Norway, a metacrisis hybrid lowered his head against the bracing blast of the wind. His immediate future was carefully mapped out, according to the Doctor’s plan, but other things had yet to be decided. Getting a name of his own would be a major step, for a start. Impressing Rose enough so that she didn’t completely abandon him, was another.

For a moment he had thought he’d heard a voice, but it couldn’t be true. There was no one else on the beach except the three of them, and the other two were in front of him, beyond the blanket of the sound of the waves and coastal wind. 

No. There it was again: another shout. He hadn’t been mistaken. Stopping in his tracks, he turned his attention towards the incoming swell. Was someone out in the water calling for help? He strained his eyesight to try and see. 

That’s when he saw them. A tiny person running through the edge of the tide, dressed in a thin cotton dress while the wind blasted her from all directions and her shoes became sodden. Uncaring about the elements, she had eyes only for him as she ran across the wet sand towards him. Breathless but determined, she shouted, “Daddy!”

“Donna,” he murmured in disbelief. And then more loudly so that she might hear, “Donna!”

A wide, face-splitting grin broke out across her face as she got near enough to see his expression. “Daddy!” she squealed. 

He bent low to sweep her up into his embrace, hugging her close and glorifying in her presence. 

Rose climbed back through the sand dunes towards him and came close as slowly as possible as confusion raged within her. “Who’s this?” she demanded to know as she saw the man she’d been gifted hugging some unknown child. “And who does she belong to?”

Not letting go, and certainly in no hurry to do so, he faintly explained, “She’s mine. She’s my little girl.”

“Your what?!” Rose spluttered. 

She was even more put out when Donna triumphantly declared, “He’s my daddy.”

“How can you be her daddy?” Rose fiercely questioned him. 

Gently putting down the child in his arms, he kept a tight possessive hold of Donna’s hand. “You knew the Doctor has been a father. He told you so during the London Olympics. I know he did, so don’t deny it. And just like him, we formed a parent-child relationship,” he stated, waving a finger between him and the child. “This is my daughter Donna.”

“What! You named her after Donna Noble?” Rose flailed in her confusion. Not only had the woman taken her place by the Doctor’s side, _HER_ rightful place, but some kid with her name was now muscling in on the substitute. 

“I couldn’t very well call her Jenny, could I?” he huffed, leading the child up the beach and passed Rose. “That was their daughter’s name.”

Rose immediately followed with even more questions whirling around in her head. “What d’you mean, ‘their daughter’?”

Without looking back, he answered, “The Doctor and Donna had a daughter called Jenny. Keep up. I thought you knew everything about him and had been keeping tabs on Donna through the timelines.”

“I certainly didn’t know that!” she spat. 

“Hello. Who’s this with you?” Jackie kindly asked, bending down to talk to the strange child by his side. “Have you lost your mummy?”

Donna grasped his hand with both hers to anchor herself. Shaking her head, she politely replied, “No, I’ve found my daddy.”

Shocked, Jackie blurted out, “Pardon!”

So Donna pointed to his chest. “He is my dad. It’s me and him against the world and the whole universe.”

Her mouth moved but no sound came out, so Jackie looked to him to explain it. 

“Let me introduce my daughter Donna. She found a way to find me again. Say ‘hello’ to Jackie.”

“Hello.”

“But…. How?” Jackie near wailed. 

After exchanging a meaningful glance, Donna replied, “The Doctor is my friend. He saved me and let me come here. He made this just for me.” She lifted up an arm to show off the device strapped to her wrist. Noting Rose’s sudden interest in it, Donna sternly proclaimed, “It can’t go backwards. If I try, everything would go BOOM!”

“The Doctor…. Did he steal you?” Jackie softly asked. “Is it all dodgy?”

“Oh no,” Donna giggled. “Not really. He rescued me from some aliens, but I had no family left to go to, so he helped me get here, to my new daddy.”

Jackie turned her gaze onto the Metacrisis Doctor. “And you’re okay with this?”

He beamed a smile. “Very.”

“What about you, Rose? You’re not saying much.”

“It’s all new, Mum,” Rose floundered. “A bit overwhelming, but it isn’t up to me whether he keeps her or not.”

With a nod of her head, Jackie muttered, “I suppose so. Let’s find somewhere warmer to wait for your dad to pick us up. This beach is blimming freezing!”

Now feeling more positive about his situation, the new Doctor led his young companion towards their joint future. They could face the oncoming problems together.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Prompts:** “Are you human?” “Is that optional?”; “My best friend was an android.”


End file.
